


The Affair of the Necklace

by ryfkah



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Crossdressing, Gen, Mystery, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:34:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21829795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/pseuds/ryfkah
Summary: Chloe Viellard had often proved herself impervious to awkwardness. When she arrived, she did not even glance towards the stairs; simply sat down in the armchair that Dominique showed her to and said, without preamble, “I have been thinking of how it might be proven who stole the Garneau jewels."
Relationships: Dominique Viellard & Chloe Viellard
Comments: 12
Kudos: 41
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Affair of the Necklace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selena/gifts).



“And so, of course, now none of the Nevilles are speaking to each other at _all_ ,” Dominique concluded. Rose smiled, Olympe rolled her eyes very slightly, and Dominique paused to take a sip of coffee while she cast around for another conversational topic. 

It was August in New Orleans, and punishingly hot; there was fever in the city; and Dominique’s sister-in-law Rose was seven months pregnant, while her husband sought a killer somewhere in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, his exact whereabouts and date of return entirely unknown. There was very little that Dominique could do to remedy any aspects of this unfortunate situation. What she could do was take the omnibus back into the city from her summer cottage once a week – braving the heat, and the fever, and her mother’s sharp remarks about the uselessness of the endeavor – to sit with Rose and try and distract her from her troubles with idle chatter about unimportant things, like sensational novels, and sartorial disasters, and the scandals of the wealthy Creoles who summered along the lakes. 

Sometimes, as today, her weekly visits coincided with Olympe’s. Dominique loved Olympe and was always glad to see her – of course she did, of course she was – but it did sometimes make it harder to launch cheerfully into a discussion of all the worst points of the Viellard sisters’ wardrobes when she could almost feel her sister’s disinterest radiating from the point where she sat. 

_So let Olympe talk about something that interests her, then! Let her talk about her work, or her children – anything to catch Rose’s attention, make her laugh or smile –_

But Olympe, unlike Dominique, felt no need to fill a silence. She said only what she thought was necessary, and guarded her words, even among her family. 

And the humid air hung heavy, and Rose’s eyes were tired, and Dominique smiled and fanned herself, and launched once more into the fray. “Oh, but darlings – speaking of people who _aren’t_ speaking to each other, you know half of Milneburgh is cutting Pierre Garneau dead in the street over this business of his wife’s missing jewels – for you know everybody is sure he stole them himself, though nobody can figure out _how_ –”

“The Garneau jewels?” Olympe’s eyes narrowed, a spark of interest in her face for the first time that afternoon. “I heard they locked Jacques Bichet up in the Milneburgh jail over that.” 

“ _Did_ they?” cried Dominique, and regretted it at once when Olympe cast her one of her usual inscrutable glances, the kind Dominique could never help but read as an indictment: _the girl doesn’t hear anything but white men’s gossip._

“Jacques Bichet?” said Rose, distressed. “The flautist? I hadn’t heard!” 

“That’s no surprise,” said Olympe, relenting. “It was just yesterday night they grabbed him. Nobody hardly got time to hear about it yet.”

Though Dominique and Olympe both knew that if Pierre Garneau himself had been arrested, or any other member of his wealthy white family – rather than a free musician of color – then the news would have been to Dominique by breakfast.

“That Garneau says he saw him coming out of the room they were staying in, when the musicians had their dinner break,” Olympe went on. “’Course Jacques swears he never left the ballroom the whole time, and so does his uncle … but it’s their word against Garneau’s.” Her voice was sardonic. “So I’m sure he’ll be walking right out of that jail in no time.” 

Rose leaned forward. “You say the rumor is that Garneau did it himself? But why should he need to sell his own jewels?”

“His _wife’s_ jewels,” said Dominique. “A family heirloom, darling, and she’d _never_ allow him to sell it … and everyone knows the man’s deep in debt, since the bank’s crashed. Marie Demagnan – his placée, you know – used to practically drip with jewels herself, but he’s not been to see her in months, and I heard she’s been visiting the pawnshop – though any true friend of hers would have advised her to sell those hideous topaz earrings _months_ ago, bank crash or no --”

“I wonder what Jacques did to earn Garneau’s enmity,” said Rose, frowning. 

“Be a black man,” said Olympe, “in a white hotel. No matter that he was invited in there to play music for them. They need a scapegoat, that’s always who it’s gonna be.” 

“But surely they didn’t find any jewels on him. With an investigation, it should be possible to prove his innocence, don’t you think? They won’t hold him if the jewels are found elsewhere.”

Dominique opened her mouth, but Olympe cut in first. “Girl, you’re near eight months gone. You going to go wandering round Milneburgh on your own, asking questions about some blankitte’s missing necklace? Don’t you even think about it.”

Rose pushed her spectacles up her nose, a pugnacious look on her freckled face. “Whatever my physical condition, Olympe, my mental capabilities are perfectly undimmed. And Jacques is a friend. You know that Ben would try to help if he could.”

“Ben’s a man,” said Olympe, brutally. “And he got a white best friend, and a white pal in the police – both of them gone up into the Rockies with him, nobody knows where, so _they_ can’t help you out either – and even with all that, if that habit of poking his nose into white men’s crimes don’t get him killed one day, it’ll be a damn miracle.” 

Harsh as the words were, the pride and respect in Olympe’s voice was clear to hear underneath it. Sometimes Dominique wondered if Ben were the only member of their family that Olympe was truly proud of – if, without that bridge, she would have entirely disclaimed the mother who had more or less disclaimed her, and discarded Dominique by proxy too.

But no, that was unfair to her sister. If Dominique had ever needed her, Olympe would certainly have helped – as indeed she had during Dominique’s pregnancies, and a hundred other times – far more generously than their mother ever had, and without asking anything in return. But Dominique did not know if she, herself, would have known how to ask, without Ben to translate between them. They belonged to different periods of their mother’s life; Livia had not given either of them each other’s languages. 

Sometimes Dominique wished Olympe _would_ , indeed, ask something in return – but either she did not how to do that either, or else Dominique had nothing that she wanted. 

“Ben _would_ help,” Olympe was saying now, an accidental echo of Dominique’s thoughts. “If he were here. But he ain’t.” She shook her head. “I’ll light a candle for Jacques Bichet.”

“I’ll tell you both anything I hear, of course,” Dominique said, and both Rose and Olympe turned to blink at her – as if, she thought, they’d both forgotten that she currently resided in the town where the crime had occurred. Or perhaps they’d simply forgotten she was there at all. “If there’s something that can help --” 

Olympe sighed and patted her on the hand. “You do that,” she said, kindly, and Dominique looked down, so that she could preserve her smile.

**

But of course Dominique’s time was not only filled with gossip; there was a lover to please, a child to tend to, all of the day’s errands to be run. The next afternoon found her en route to the glass-grinder’s, bringing a pair of spectacles to repair – Henri had left them about on a table the night before, and Charmian had promptly stepped on them. This was not the first time this had happened, nor, Dominique was sure, would it be the last. The glass-grinders in New Orleans and Milneburgh knew her well. 

She swept through the door, and then paused, as she realized that another customer had come in before her: elegant, diminutive, blonde, eyes narrowed in a way that made her look hard and suspicious, but in fact mostly indicated that she probably ought to have been wearing her own pair of spectacles. 

Henri’s wife, Chloé Viellard. 

There was nothing catastrophic in this. Dominique and Chloé had reached an immediate unspoken understanding when they first met in rather dramatic circumstances following Chloé and Henri’s wedding last year: the place in Henri’s affections that Dominique had, Chloé did not in the least want. Still, it was one thing to be warm towards one’s husband’s placée in private, especially when one was in the process of fending off a band of murderers seeking pirate treasure during a hurricane; it was quite another to be seen greeting her in a public place, where anyone might see and remark upon it. Dominique, hesitating on the threshold, wondered if she ought to politely withdraw, and leave the scene to Chloé.

But before she could, Chloé turned and saw her, and gave her a startlingly bright smile. “Dominique! What a pleasant surprise!”

Reversing her plan in a moment, Dominique came forward with a smile of her own. “Darling!” she exclaimed – a way to avoid both the formality (and awkwardness) of ‘Madame Viellard,’ and the potentially treacherous intimacy of ‘Chloé’. “Are you hurrying away, or do you have a little time?” 

“No hurry at all,” answered Chloé, and then, when she saw Dominique turning to face her instead of the counter, waved her off with a hand. “Oh, complete your errand, by all means. I’m happy to wait.” Suiting actions to words, she promptly pulled out a small Latin volume out of her reticule and settled herself against the wall to page through it – very much as Henri would have, had he been along on the errand.

Dominique had to stifle a smile as she turned back to the counter. 

Twenty minutes later, after Dominique had negotiated for the repair of Chloé’s husband’s glasses, she turned around again to find Chloé still engrossed in her book. She coughed politely. “Darling...” 

“You’re finished?” Chloé promptly closed the book, and put it back in her reticule. “Then would you like to walk with me a little?” 

It was the middle of the afternoon, and even with the lakeside breezes, few people were abroad at this hour in the summer – which was surely part of the reason Chloé had felt comfortable suggesting a walk at all. “I was glad to hear your husband is recovering from his illness,” she said, as they ambled down the street. 

“Ah, yes!” Chloé answered, with a faint smile. “It’s reassuring to know he’s on the mend. Though of course I shouldn’t expect him to leave his bed too soon.”

Henri had, of course, been at Dominique’s cottage for the majority of the summer. In the normal course of things he would pass three or four nights a week there, but since falling sick with a bad cold three weeks ago, he had taken up permanent residence. Even if it had made any sense to try and move the invalid, Chloé had no interest in playing the part of nursemaid. All the news of Henri’s illness and recovery had come through letters from Dominique to Chloé, rather than the other way around. 

But this could not be said aloud, not even on the near-empty street. 

“I hope it has not been too burdensome for you,” Dominique said, sincerely. Sweat was starting to bead her forehead under her tignon, and she felt a faint pang of envy for Chloé’s uncovered hair. “Of course sometimes one does enjoy a little quiet, and far better he fall ill now, when the town is quiet, than during the winter – or Carnivale, heaven forfend! – but even at this time of year, there are events when one would prefer to have a gentleman as squire –” 

She wasn’t entirely sure why she brought up the topic next; perhaps it was simply the kindness of Olympe’s smile, still stinging in the back of her mind. “The cotillion at the Devereaux Hotel, for instance ... p’tite, you must have been _desolate_ to miss it!” 

“When Monsieur Garneau stole his wife’s jewels, you mean?” Chloé’s eyes glinted. “At the time I wasn’t sorry to have the excuse to stay home, but in retrospect …”

“Darling, I know! With the scandal, the event of the summer! Though of course it can’t be proven that Monsieur Garneau did anything of the kind, and now that poor musician thrown in jail for it --” 

“Oh,” said Chloé, thoughtfully, “I’m sure it _could_ be proven, with a little research. Pierre Garneau has never had a particular reputation for cleverness.” She glanced at Dominique. “Isn’t that the sort of thing your intrepid brother is always about doing?”

“Alas,” said Dominique, “at present, he’s more than occupied being intrepid hundreds of miles away, on a simply _wild_ adventure with his pet American policeman --” 

The conversation turned to news of Ben, and then Rose – Chloé was always eager to hear news of Rose; Dominique occasionally suspected her of a sort of schoolgirl crush on the older scholar – which made it easy enough for Dominique to say, a half hour or so later: “Were she not so far along, I’m sure Rose would be up in Milneburgh investigating the Garneau jewels herself … the man who was arrested is a friend of theirs, you know.”

“Oh, is he? How terrible,” said Chloé, in the matter-of-fact tones of one who thought pity, rather than feeling it. She walked another few steps ahead, then stopped. “It would be rather interesting, you know, to uncover the truth. Intellectually, I mean. I expect that’s what your brother and sister-in-law enjoy about it. One solves a mathematical puzzle for the sheer satisfaction of finding the answer – but how much more satisfying, to know that by discovering the solution, one might also bring about a degree of material benefit?” 

Dominique thought of the anger that she often saw simmering in her brother’s eyes when he spoke of a death such as that of Aucassin Couvent or Hesione LeGros – the kind of deaths that no officer of the law in New Orleans would consider worth investigation, or bring a white man to trial for if they did – and said, lightly, “Perhaps so.”

“Dominique...” They had retraced their steps enough to return to the street by the glass-grinder’s, where Chloé’s carriage had patiently awaited her for an hour. The sun was drawing down, and the streets were again starting to fill. Still, Chloé reached out, and pressed Dominique’s hand, lightly, before withdrawing. “May I call upon you tomorrow? I would like to discuss the topic further, if you’re free.”

“Why, of course, darling,” said Dominique; gave her a dazzling smile, and saw Chloé blink in the force of it. “I’ve enjoyed our conversation _tremendously.”_

**

Of course Dominique could never have visited Chloé in her own house. It would not in the least do for it to be gotten about town that the Viellards had invited a woman of color to eat at their table. 

On the other hand, it was hardly less strange for Chloé Viellard to visit the house of her husband’s placée, and stranger still for her to do so while said husband was ensconced in the upstairs bedroom, sadly sniffling through an apparently endless supply of handkerchiefs. 

But Chloé Viellard had often proved herself impervious to awkwardness, and this afternoon was no exception. When she arrived, she did not even glance towards the stairs, simply sat down in the armchair that Dominique showed her to and said, without preamble, “I have been thinking of how it might be proven who stole the Garneau jewels. It seems to me the simplest solution would be to find the jewels themselves, and trace their path from there.” 

Dominique knew that Chloé Viellard was perfectly capable of performing the basic social politenesses when required. It seemed that Dominique herself had been moved to the category of people who did not require them. In their situation, it would be easy to read this as a sign of disrespect.

From Chloé, Dominique thought it might be a mark of intimacy. 

What would it be like, to feel so secure with another person that one could simply say exactly what one wished to say? She couldn’t imagine it. 

“How right you are, darling,” she said, as she might say to Henri, and leaned gracefully over to pour Chloé a cup of coffee. “Of course, the jewels must be found. But surely not even Monsieur Garneau would be so foolish as to try and sell them here in Milneburgh – will you take a praline? They’re fresh-made this morning – and there are dozens of others in the towns around Lake Pontchartrain, not to mention in New Orleans itself –”

“Thank you,” said Chloé, accepting the praline. “Yes, of course, it would not be possible for us to investigate every pawnshop and jeweler’s emporium in a twenty-mile radius. There isn’t the time, and in any case it would be marked upon. Were Henri in a fit state, he could simply claim to be in the market for a necklace for you; how inconvenient of him, to be bedridden just now!” 

Another one of those faint smiles chased its way across her face. Dominique returned it, and wondered, for a moment, whether it would be tactful to protest that it would be just as believable for Henri to be chasing jewels for Chloé – but no, Chloé had made it clear this was not the kind of fiction in which she was interested. 

“A great inconvenience, truly,” she said, instead (though she pitched her voice low, lest Henri, in the room above, overhear and think she was mocking him.) “And if my brother were here, he could be his manservant, searching on his behalf. But alas! Why are men never about when one needs them?”

“Indeed,” said Chloé. “This very good, by the way.” She licked the stickiness of the sugar off her fingers, and Dominique flashed her a smile. It was rather pleasant to know that she wouldn’t offer the praise unless she meant it. “However, since we have neither of their services available to us, we must narrow the search another way. Could you be my maidservant, do you think?” 

Dominique almost dropped her own praline. “What?”

“To allow you access to the Garneau plantation,” Chloé explained. “If Monsieur Garneau sold the jewels in one of the other river towns, he had to get there somehow. His coachman must know of it. While I entertain the Garneaus, you might find out from the coachman where he has driven recently. After that, we investigate the vicinity, and, if luck is with us, voilà – a solution presents itself.” She leaned forward, looking at Dominique through her glasses. “What do you think? Will it answer?” 

She said it all perfectly matter-of-factly, as if nothing were more natural than that she should concoct a scheme to allow her husband’s mistress to spy on a wealthy white man. And indeed, it was a reasonable plan, so far as it went, and the kind of trick that Dominique knew her brother often played with Hannibal’s assistance, when embarked on an investigation. 

But Hannibal was Ben’s friend, a man he trusted. A man who lived as his equal, so much as any white man could be. 

A man who did not – to provide but a single example – own slaves himself. 

Dominique had been the one to attract Chloé’s attention to the case, but now she felt rather like the situation was running away with her. Chloé craved an intellectual challenge, everyone who knew her knew this. Still, so far as Dominique had seen, she had always operated, like a chess-player, within the strict scope of what was allowed to her. She manipulated the rules with great finesse, but did not break them. 

But it seemed that when an interesting enough game presented itself, Chloé was more than willing to break the rules after all – and Dominique depended far more on the fragile protection of those unspoken rules than Chloé herself did. 

On the other hand –

On the other hand, Dominique knew she could do it. She knew that given twenty minutes alone with the Garneau coachman, she could know everything there was to know about all the places he’d taken his master in the past week, month, year. 

And, it seemed, Chloé knew that she could do it, too.

Dominique took a covering sip of coffee, to give herself more time. From above, she heard Charmian’s voice lift, babbling something to her father; the faint murmur of Henri answering her, followed by a sneeze. If Chloé heard, she gave no sign. Her eyes were fixed on Dominique, waiting for her opinion.

Dominique lowered the coffee cup again. “You _are_ clever, darling,” she said. “Yes, I think it will answer.” 

**

But in fact, unfortunately, it did not answer – or at least, it did not provide the answers that Dominique had hoped. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I’d welcome the chance to get out a bit,” said John, the coachman. “Ever since that necklace walked off, Madame’s been in a murdering mood. If I was Michie Garneau, you wouldn’t catch me hanging around here.” He sighed. “But he’s not gone nowhere these past four days.” 

And so, of course, John had not either, and had instead been at constant risk of catching the edge of his masters’ bad temper. Dominique gave him her best look of melting sympathy. Everybody suffered in a household where the principals were at war. “But surely,” she offered, “Madame Garneau cannot blame her poor husband for what was only bad luck --”

“Oh, she blames everyone and everything. Michie Garneau, for wanting to stay over at his friend’s hotel, rather than riding straight back – Michie Devereaux, for not posting armed guards outside her room whenever she was out of it, or whatever she thinks he ought to have done – the sun for setting on the night the theft happened, I wouldn’t doubt.”

Dominique laughed, perhaps a little more merrily than the joke merited. John smiled at her, and she smiled back. He had not told her what she wanted to hear, but he seemed a nice man. She could take the pains to make his afternoon a little brighter. 

“Mimi!” 

Chloé called out Dominique’s assumed name from the front parlor; “Coming, miss!” Dominique called back, and pushed herself up from the stoop where she sat. 

She bobbed John a curtsey – a quick, laughing parody of the one she might have swept a partner, in her own personage, at a Blue Ribbon Ball. “Alas! It seems our time is at an end.”

“You think your mistress will be coming back round some time for another visit?” said John, hopefully.

In lieu of giving him an answer he would not like, ‘Mimi’ blew him a kiss, and John mimed catching it to his heart. Dominique was smiling as she went towards the parlor to answer Chloé’s call … 

But as Chloé’s carriage drove away from the plantation, and ‘Mimi’ dropped away behind them, Dominique found herself wondering what her brother Ben felt when he embarked on deceptions like this. There were lives she had never lived – God willing, never would live. ‘Mimi’, to her, could be a role and nothing more. What did it mean to him?

What did it mean to Chloé, to have her husband’s mistress at her beck and call, even for the course of an afternoon?

But Chloé’s face across from her had nothing of satisfaction in it. Her social smile had fallen away, and she looked tired and irritable. “I’ve spent duller hours,” she said, “but not many of them. Please, Dominique, tell me you learned something to make this interminable visit worthwhile.”

“Well, darling,” Dominique answered, “two things, I learned. One, is that neither of the Garneaus has left the plantation since they returned from that ill-fated cotillion --”

She saw Chloé’s brows draw down, disappointment flickering across her face, and smiled, drawing out the second reveal. 

“-- and the other is that Pierre Garneau and Jules Devereaux are known to be friends, or so John the coachman said – indeed, that is why the Garneaus took their own room at the hotel, when it would have taken them only an hour to drive home and be safe and sound in their own beds. Chloé, do you think it is possible that the Garneau jewels never left the hotel at all?”

She’d been in the kitchen among the slaves, and the given name slipped out before she could catch it: Chloé, as she might call John, or Ben. A slave, a brother, or a comrade. Almost never what a woman of color would call a white woman to her face. 

Under no circumstances what a slave would call her mistress. Perhaps that was the reason she had said it. 

Chloé did not react one way or another. Perhaps, she had not even registered it. “Possible?” she said, thoughtfully. “Very possible, I would think. The hotel was searched, of course – but there might well be a hidden compartment of some kind, that Devereaux knew about, and revealed to Garneau --”

Her eyes flashed. She looked again at Dominique, and Dominique once again had the faint sensation of hanging onto a runaway horse. Rules were about to be broken; it would be exciting, and exhilarating, and have great potential to end in disaster. “The next step is clear. We must find a way into the hotel.” 

** 

Chloé Viellard had such self-possession that one could, on occasion, almost forget that she was barely eighteen years old. 

Unfortunately, a cravat and tailcoat shaved years off of her already scant tally. Even some false stubble, artfully applied with Dominique’s rouge, could not make her look more than sixteen. 

As the carriage door opened in front of the hotel, Dominique surveyed her once again. “Darling, of course you look marvelous – _just_ like the woman who played Cherubino in the opera last spring, and I’m sure you’d sing better, too, if the occasion called for it – but are you really certain this will work? They’ll think I’m the veriest cradle robber!”

Chloé only laughed and offered Dominique her arm. It wasn’t only the clothes that made her look younger. There was a spark of something in her face – mischief, perhaps – that Dominique could not remember seeing there before. 

And surely only a very young woman, a very young and irresponsible woman, would think it a good idea to risk her reputation by dressing herself up in a man’s clothes and attempting to bribe her way into an expensive hotel with a veiled placée on her arm. This was not like paying a call on the Garneaus and asking a few slightly intrusive questions. 

_It’s like a plot out of a sensational novel … and I didn’t even think she read them!_

But it had to be admitted: Dominique, herself, had always loved a sensational novel. They took place in a world where the ordinary rules of logic and society simply did not apply. It was impossible to live in such a world all the time, but for the span of a few hundred pages – 

She wondered if Chloé, looking at Dominique, saw the same unfamiliar spark in her own face that she saw in Chloé’s. 

And in fact, despite the potential for disaster, it all went remarkably smoothly. Though the man on duty looked extremely askance at the diminutive ‘Charles St. Chinian’ when she demanded the best room in the house for the night, a good look at the color of her money removed the majority of his objections – especially once Dominique leaned on Chloé’s arm and gazed limpidly up at her through her veil in a manner calculated to make the small woman look taller by contrast. 

“Thank you for that,” said Chloé, as they climbed the stairs to the room the Garneaus had taken on the night of the theft. “I’m certainly not the world’s greatest actress, and had I been alone, they would likely have seen a child – but a man escorting a beautiful woman for, ah, potentially immoral purposes, is perforce a man indeed.”

Dominique laughed. “It’s charming of you to say, p’tite, but under this veil, who’s to say who is beautiful? I might be a crone for all they know.”

“Ah, but the veil only adds to your mystique,” said Chloé, straight-faced. 

“Flatterer!” cried Dominique.

Under the circumstances, falling into the light flirtation was as natural as breathing. This was the way one spoke with a gentleman. It meant nothing, no more than laughing at Hannibal’s exaggerated compliments, or blowing a kiss to John the coachman; it was a charming pastime, pleasant for both parties, and nothing more. 

Chloé was not a gentleman. Chloé was the wife of Dominique’s lover. She held Dominique’s future, and her daughter’s, in the palm of her hand. 

But so long as they stayed balanced on the soap-bubble of fiction – so long as they were a (very) young gentleman and his secret amour, or a pair of intrepid adventurers out of sensationalist fiction – it did not matter. It was a game they were playing, still. A world of make-believe, in which Chloé could pay Dominique flattering compliments, and laugh about spending the night with her. 

Even though neither of them could ever, would ever, speak plainly about the reality of who did sleep with Dominique, and why that was so. 

_The custom of the country._

If Dominique thought too hard about the strangeness of the situation, the bubble would burst.

But Dominique – like her mother – was extremely good at inhabiting the world in which she found herself, and ignoring everything outside of it. When Chloé held the door to the room chivalrously open for her, she sailed through, feeling very like an opera singer herself. 

Once the door was closed again, Chloé immediately pulled out a tape measure and dropped to her knees. “I hope you brought a book,” she said, “as this is likely to take some time.” 

Dominique had not brought a book, though it was in a way charming that Chloé had assumed she would. “I shall keep watch at the door,” she told Chloé, and took up a position of attention. Of course the entire ruse and disguise had been designed to assure them privacy; still, it seemed the sort of thing that one would do in a sensational novel. 

In fact she mostly watched Chloé, who crawled around enthusiastically on the ground, taking measurements and consulting notations from a small notebook she carried with her. She looked happier than Dominique had ever seen her. At one point, she glanced up and remarked, “Astounding, how much more convenient trousers are for this sort of thing.”

“Really!” said Dominique. “Darling, I’ll be honest, I’ve always thought they looked rather uncomfortable.”

“Oh, they are,” said Chloé, cheerfully. “I can hardly bend my knees. But skirts would be terribly in the way. Come over here, will you, sweetheart? I think I’ve derived the solution and you ought to share in the triumph.”

Dominique obligingly came over to the corner of the room, where Chloé tapped three spots confidently in the paneling. A small portion of it immediately swung open. 

From inside, something gleamed. 

For all the fun of the masquerade, Dominique had never really expect it to yield results. She stared at Chloé. “ _How_ did you manage that?” 

Chloé immediately embarked on a lengthy explanation involving architecture, angles, and trigonometric properties, which Dominique did not follow in the least. After a few sentences of this, she cut her off – something that, in the back of her mind, she was well aware she would never do in any other circumstances than these. “Well, never mind – that’s all marvelous, of course, but what are we going to _do_ about it?”

“Well,” said Chloé, “alert the police, and --”

“ _Will_ we?” said Dominique.

And she saw some of the bright light in Chloé’s eyes fade a little, as the truth of their position sank in. It had all been so unexpectedly easy, they had almost forgotten.

How could they tell the police? What would they say they had been doing here?

Would it even make a difference, if Pierre Garneau said, “How wonderful you found the jewels, and Jacques Bichet must have hid them there?” 

Alerting the police was something they would do in a sensational novel. But now they had actually found the jewels, the real jewels, and that brought them back to a world where things mattered. Where the fact that Chloé was a respectable society matron with a reputation to protect mattered; where the fact that Dominique was a woman of color who could not legally testify in court mattered. 

The real world, where the fragile equilibrium on which they all balanced – Chloé, Dominique, Henri, Charmian – would be overturned, if they spoke too much truth in the wrong way. 

And where a man’s life might be forfeit, if they didn’t speak enough.

Chloé drew in a breath, and let it out again. “Well, then – what do you suggest?” 

Dominique looked at the cupboard in which the jewels sparkled, and down at her hands. 

Her brother had uncovered the crimes of so many men. She could not remember if he had ever, even once, gotten anything that he defined as justice. 

“Why, p’tite,” she said, quietly, “we blackmail Monsieur Devereaux, of course. We bring the jewels to him, and tell him what we have found – and that if he does not wish to be exposed as a liar and a conspirator, he will make up a story of how it must all have been a mistake, and they were only misplaced, and never stolen at all.”

Pierre Garneau would suffer no punishment. He would, perhaps, try to steal his wife’s jewels again, and point the finger at somebody else, and that person might suffer. But Ben and Rose’s friend would go free, and today that would have to be enough for Dominique. 

It was, after all, more than anyone had expected of her already. 

Chloé’s face was unreadable under the fake stubble, but she nodded her assent.

She had solved the puzzle she set herself to solve, and perhaps that was enough for her as well.

**

“Have you seen Monsieur Bichet this week?” Dominique said, with studied carelessness, over cards with Rose a week later. “I heard he was released the other day.”

Rose looked up, with a smile. “Yes, I saw him yesterday! Safe and sound, with his uncle.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Olympe, and brought over the coffee she’d been brewing for Rose. “I wouldn’t have laid odds on it, when last we spoke.”

“Nor I.” Rose accepted the coffee and took a thoughtful sip. “It’s hard to think how they could have been so careless as to simply _lose_ a necklace that valuable. It was surprisingly decent of the hotelier, to hand it over, when everyone was ready to blame somebody else for it, and he could simply have kept it and sold it himself – but I suppose that will be good for his business, in a way, for people to know him for an honest man.” She smiled at Dominique. “Is everyone still talking about it in Milneburgh, Minou? Or is it all stale news, now that it turns out there isn’t the least bit of scandal about it?” 

“Oh,” said Olympe, tolerantly. “I’m sure someone else done some other fool thing by now.” The release of Jacques Bichet had put her in a good mood; she looked at Dominique and said, with a smile of her own, “Whatever it is, you may as well tell it, Minou. I know you’re dying to.” 

It had, in fact, been on the tip of Dominique’s tongue to tell her sister and sister-in-law the whole story – the investigation, the masquerade, the blackmail – and catch, for once, that look of pride in Olympe’s eyes, directed at her. 

But as she looked at Olympe, she felt the words die in her mouth. 

What could she say? That, for the span of a day, she and her lover’s wife had been something akin to partners? That they had worked together, and placed themselves at risk that was almost equal, simply for the satisfaction of an answer, and the barest teaspoon’s worth of justice? 

_Olympe won’t believe it. She’ll say Chloé must have had some other reason, or that she’ll take advantage of me in the future –_

But even as she thought that, she knew that wasn’t fair to Olympe, either. 

Dominique knew all the ways to speak her way around the things that mattered, and make sure those things were understood by the space of the gaps. In the world in which she moved, this was safety. But Olympe had learned safety in a different kind of speech. To make herself understood, Dominique would need to speak plainly to her, and she did not think she could do it; she did not know the words she would use for a friendship that, in both her world and Olympe’s, should have been impossible. 

There was still something of the soap-bubble about the whole adventure. It was Dominique herself who was afraid that if she looked too hard at what had passed between her and Chloé, if she tried to acknowledge it directly, it would dissolve in her hands. 

So she laughed, as expected, and said, “Of course, why should anyone be talking about the Garneau jewels, when Armand Neville and his brother practically came to _blows_ in the marketplace --” 

Olympe did not care, but she was listening. That was a gift too, in its way, and Dominique knew to appreciate it. Still, she could almost imagine the way that her sister might have looked at her, if she lived in a world in which she could simply say what she wanted to say.


End file.
